


I've been leaving you in radio silence, though I'd love to catch a pass

by Orchestralien



Category: Coraline (2009), Gravity Falls, ParaNorman (2012), Psychonauts (Video Games), mystery kids - Fandom
Genre: F/M, angst but not really, i've never written fanfiction before can you tell, sucker for wybiline dynamics, this is my entry into the mystery kids even though i'm years late
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-24
Updated: 2020-12-24
Packaged: 2021-03-10 20:47:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,418
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28293321
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Orchestralien/pseuds/Orchestralien
Summary: “Why don’t you just shut up?” Wybie was fuming now, but he kept his gaze low, looking at anything that wasn’t the blue-haired girl standing in front of him.“Why don’t you make me?” She retorted, her face scrunching up into a picture Wybie could only assume was disgust or contempt.Normally, this style of conversation was not uncommon between the pair of them. To the rest of the Mystery Kids, Wybie and Coraline’s friendship seemed to flow confusingly smoothly. Rough-yet-playful punches, snarky remarks, and jovial mockings were exchanged frequently by both of them. But today’s bickering was not playful and friendly.---Coraline is upset and Wybie is confused, but they figure it out eventually.
Relationships: Coraline Jones/Wybie Lovat
Comments: 2
Kudos: 17





	I've been leaving you in radio silence, though I'd love to catch a pass

  
  
“Why don’t you just shut up?” Wybie was fuming now, but he kept his gaze low, looking at anything that wasn’t the blue-haired girl standing in front of him.  
  
“Why don’t you make me?” She retorted, her face scrunching up into a picture Wybie could only assume was disgust or contempt. Normally, this style of conversation was not uncommon between the pair of them. To the rest of the Mystery Kids, Wybie and Coraline’s friendship seemed to flow confusingly smoothly. Rough-yet-playful punches, snarky remarks, and jovial mockings were exchanged frequently by both of them. But today’s bickering was not playful and friendly.  
  
The day had started out fine. Dipper had asked Raz about the properties and limitations of the mental world, Mabel and Neil had conspired to bedazzle Lili’s vest —with the help and distraction of Norman,— after which Lili proceeded to hunt them all down, sparkling all around The Shack. So, by the time afternoon rolled around, most of the kids were feeling pretty worn out. That was, at least, until Coraline casually made her way downstairs, hands conspicuously holding on to a mysterious object behind her back.  
  
Most of the kids were sitting around the living room, vaguely aware of the nonsensical ads playing on the television. Coraline had swiftly moved in front of the tv, rocking on her heels in anticipation as she cleared her throat to grab the attention of her friends.  
  
“Ahem, everyone?” Coraline’s eyes shone with mischief as the kids paused their conversations to look up at her.  
  
Wybie, who had just gotten back from the fridge, tilted his head at her, and for a moment when she locked eyes with him, he thought he saw her smile falter. Shaking it off, he made his way to sit at the edge of the carpet, waiting for Coraline’s announcement.  
  
“You’ll never believe what I found!” Coraline all but squealed.  
  
“A brain?” Interjected Raz.  
  
“A hamster-sized bear?” Added Dipper. Looking up towards Dipper, Wybie could see that his journal was currently open to a page about bear-sized hamsters  
  
“A duck with a tiny hat?” Mabel squeaked, her wide eyes attempting to peer around or through Coraline to identify the hidden object.  
  
“Okay, okay… better.” With a smirk, Coraline pulled out the elusive object she held behind her. As it came into view, Wybie’s eyes widened in horror. It was his diary.  
  
Wybie didn’t keep a diary. That would be silly, childish, even. It had really started out as a logbook to keep memories of all of the crazy adventures he had been through with his friends. Then, slowly, it morphed into a logbook of Wybie’s feelings. He thought he had hidden it very well, underneath layers of wrenches and screwdrivers in his toolbox. How could she have found it? And worse, what was she planning to do with it?  
  
“This --my dear friends-- is Wybie’s very own diary!” She grinned at the crowd, but not at Wybie. “I thought I would do the honors of reading a passage or two; share with the class!”  
  
Panic, at this moment, was overtaking Wybie. His heart was racing, his mind was nearly blank, save for one singular thought. Don’t let anybody read that book, especially not her. In a flash, he jumped out of his seated position and ran over to snatch the diary from Coraline. He was taller, but she was faster, and she swiftly moved the diary behind her.  
  
“Don’t you dare! That’s mine, Jonesy, that’s private!” Wybie’s anger was growing with every second she withheld his logbook. Whatever game she was playing at, he didn’t want any part of.  
  
“H-hey, Coraline, you can just give it back…” Norman started. “I-I-I really don’t need to know that stuff, that’s for him…” Norman gradually tapered off after Coraline gave him a look that could kill. Instead, Dipper took up the mantle in Norman’s absence.  
  
“Norman’s right, Coraline. It’s fine, really.” He tried to calm her down, but Coraline’s death grip on the notebook behind her back only tightened as she continued to doge Wybie’s grasps.  
  
“What the hell, Jonesy?” Wybie was practically pleading now, but he would not lose hold of his grip on the book. Wybie snuck a glance at Coraline’s face and was shocked to see such fierce determination on her face. She was pissed, but at what? At him, for having something she didn’t know about?  
  
He must have gone farther into his thoughts than he had intended, because before he knew it, Coraline had managed to snatch the journal away from him. By the time he was cognizant enough to call her name, she was already running out the front door of The Shack and heading towards the forest.  
  
Wybie inhaled a gasping breath, attempting to steady his frenzied heart. He glanced towards the other kids, all staring at him, mouths agape. Nobody said a word, but their eyes said it all. Norman, Niel, and Dipper were clearly worried and upset. Lili had stopped berating Mabel as they both just… looked at each other in disbelief. Raz, who had been reclining on the sofa seat, now sat perfectly rigid, unblinking.  
  
“I…” Wybie started but dropped off soon after as he felt all the kid’s eyes on him. What was he going to do? Well, what else could he do? He had done something, and it was up to him to make it right. “I’m gonna go get her… Please, just… don’t mention any of this when we come back, okay?” He watched as the other children could only nod in agreement. Silently, Wybie exited The Shack and set off to rescue Coraline. If we come back, he thought.

  
\---

“What was going on with the two of them?” Boldly or unwittingly, Mabel was the first to break the awkward silence in The Shack. Wybie had left almost ten minutes ago, and nobody was able to return the environment of the living room to its prior state.  
  
“Beats me.” Raz shrugged.  
  
“Coraline must’ve been angry with Wybie…” Norman added, tapering off at the end of his sentence.  
  
“You guys are all idiots!” Lili groaned, rising up from the comfort of the floor to stand where Coraline and Wybie had previously had their altercation. “It’s obvious! Coraline is jealous!” Lili almost shouted, proclaiming this statement as indisputable fact.  
  
“But,” Raz started. “What would she even be jealous about? The fact that he has a diary? So what, doesn’t everyone?” Lili tilted her head at him, reminding herself to telepathically ask him what exactly he meant by everyone, before shaking her head again in disappointment at the obliviousness of her friends.  
  
“How dense can you even be? No, she’s jealous because she likes him, and she thinks someone else likes him! And maybe even that he likes that someone else!” At a lackluster response from her friends, she added, “Like, like likes him.”  
  
A clamor of ohh’s erupted from Lili’s audience, and it finally seemed like everyone was on the same page. That was, at least, until Neil piped up.  
  
“But who like likes Wybie? I mean- apart from Coraline, of course.” A sharp inhale reverberated through the room as everyone turned to look at the source of the noise, Mabel Pines.  
  
“Oh no,” Mabel groaned. “I think I know what this is all about. You guys remember that mini-golf date Pacifica and I went on?”

\---

  
“Jonesy?” Wybie called out into the inky nothingness of the forest. “Jonesy? Coraline? C’mon, please just talk to me!” No response. He had been walking out here in the chilly night of the forest for nearly ten minutes with no sign or word from Coraline. His hands were starting to really get cold, and he chided himself for forgetting his gloves back at The Shack. It seemed hopeless, but Wybie refused to give up. Proceeding further inwards, he continued to shout for Coraline. After a few more minutes, however, he decided to slump down on a nearby stump. Out of breath and hoarse, he took a deep breath and attempted to collect himself again.  
  
“Jonesy, listen to me please, if you can hear me. I don’t know what I did, and your silence is… it’s really not helpin’ me out here! So just, come out, please. Just talk to me?” Wybie continued to focus on breathing, but he stilled as he heard light footsteps on the patches of grass behind him. He spun around, nearly falling over in the process, to find a teary-eyed Coraline glaring at him with a vengeance. “Jonesy.” He exhaled, as his breath finally began to steady itself at her presence. In all honesty, Coraline had nearly scared him to death. But the fact that she was here; she was safe. It made him more relieved than anything.  
  
“I…” Coraline began, but the moment she looked him in the eyes, she quickly darted them away and closed her mouth. Instinctively, Wybie shrunk back, moving to curl himself up while standing. Wybie’s typical responses to any conflict were always to hide away and make himself as small as possible, but he fought the notion as he attempted to straighten himself out. Though he was still trembling from the aftershock, Wybie began to speak.  
  
“No, Jonesy, it’s my fault, I’m-” Coraline’s head snapped up at that moment to look directly at him. The resentment Wybie had seen in her eyes when she first appeared was gone now, replaced with more tears and something in the eyes that looked like guilt.  
  
“It is not your fault, don’t you dare say that.” She took a few steps closer to him and the stump and her face became illuminated in the moonlight. Wybie almost had to look away from her at that moment. She was a mess by any metric: hair matted, knuckles and knees scraped up, and dirt on her shirt and face. But at that moment, Wybie saw her as so inextricably beautiful that he nearly froze up. His face must have said something, because Coraline faltered, looking away from his gaze as she continued. “Just, shut up. And just, let me be wrong here. I’m sorry.”  
  
That statement, in particular, shook him to recognition. Here they were, just the two of them, for what was probably the first time in weeks. Something Wybie tended to forget about Coraline was that underneath her brazen and assertive nature, she had a lot of feelings and thoughts she wouldn’t share with a group of people, no matter how close she was to them. She was never the type to “share with the class”, as his Grandma had once put it. And to boot, one thing Coraline seldom did —alone or in a group— was apologize. She had once told Wybie that she had something of an allergic reaction to outright apologies, and Wybie could see it on her now. Coraline’s face seemed to swell and redden as she spat the sorry out, and her face expressed pain like she had practically eaten glass. Wybie thought back to previous fights they had, how Coraline would make an extra effort to keep her cool and bring him bits and pieces for new inventions and, on the rare occasions when he would cry, how Coraline would grab him so tightly he felt like he could dissolve and she would hold him together.  
  
Focusing back on her face, all Wybie could think of was how to make it right. Coraline seemed to still be internally fighting against her outright apology. She looked seconds away from crumbling into a pile of dust, so Wybie did the only thing he could think of to do. Wybie moved closer and closer to her as she still fought to gain composure, before pulling her into a hug. He tried to picture everything about how she would hug him, attempting to mirror the comfort and safety he found in her hug. Almost instinctively, Coraline froze up. Wybie nearly pulled away at her initial stiffness, but he made a significant effort to stand his ground. He had to show her that it was all ok, that everything was safe. After a few more seconds, Wybie finally felt Coraline begin to relax into his grip. He heard another sniffle, and then she began to cry anew. Wybie dug frantically through his mind, attempting to rectify however he had failed, but instead of moving away from him as he’d assumed, Coraline clung to him ever-tighter. He held her for minutes, keeping a fragile-yet-firm grip, worried that if he held her too tightly she would disappear, and, too lightly, she would shatter.  
  
Eventually, Coraline’s cries began to dissipate and she loosened her grip on him. Letting go of her, Coraline moved away from him again, but they were noticeably closer to each other than before. She tilted her head upwards again to look at Wybie and he could see now that her eyes were still quite red and watery. He prepared himself to move closer to her again, but she spoke and he froze.  
  
“Ok,” Was all she said, and minutes of silence followed. She turned her face away from him again, lips pursed and brow furrowed. Wybie scanned her face, but he could tell that the only things she was saying were in her mind. She took one large breath, steadied herself, and finally looked towards him again.  
  
“You remember when Mabel had called us on her mini-golf date with Pacifica, talking about the little golf guys?”  
  
“The Liliputchiens?”  
  
“Yeah, that. And we ran there because we were close-ish and we got there and they had already solved the problem?” Coraline began to get faster, building up to something.  
  
“Yeah, Jonesy, I remember. What does any of thi-” Wybie was interrupted as Coraline continued, unphased by his comment.  
  
“And Pacifica said she’d call one of her friends to come pick us up and drop us off at The Shack? And the girl, Pacifica’s friend, Tiffany, the way she had been looking at you, and the way she was talking to you… it…” Coraline’s pace had finally caught up to her brain and she lost momentum on her message. Wybie could see in her face that she was choosing to be careful now as she furrowed her brows in concentration, forming her next sentence.  
  
“It made me really fucking upset. I-In a way I couldn’t place. And, I don’t know, for the longest time I thought I was upset with you. And maybe I was, a little bit. And I’ve been mean. I’ve been an asshole to you. And I hate that I’ve been an asshole to you because I really fucking like you, and I hate how Tiffany was looking at you like she could have you, like she knew anything about you at all!” Coraline had been building, and at that moment she had erupted. Her frantic eyes seemed to scan his, searching for some kind of understanding, possibly? For once in his life, Wybie couldn’t find anything to say, and eventually, Coraline continued.  
  
“I was… I guess it was jealousy, looking back on it because you’re just so perfect, so absolutely Wybie, and I can’t even deserve that so… so how could she?” Coraline spoke calmly now, but her eyes still betrayed the frantic energy she kept within. Wybie’s stunned expression must have made her nervous, as she promptly turned away from him again, looking down at her scraped-up knees and muddied boots. Wybie, on the other hand, had his head full of noise. Everything she had said, the story, the apology, the tears, it all had finally been pieced together in his mind. However, the loudest thought of all echoing in his mind was plain and simple, and while he still had the words, he let them out.  
  
“Jonesy, how could you think that? How could you believe that for a second? I’m the one who- who couldn’t ever even begin to deserve you! I- I thought, I thought that if all I could ever get was your friendship, that I’d take it. You deserve so much, you’re smart and brave and beautiful and you understood me, you were the first one who really, truly, understood me, how could you ever think that you were the undeserving one?” Almost immediately, Wybie recoiled at his own words. He knew he was a blabbermouth, always saying whatever came to mind, but he was sure that was too much. Coraline was sure to see how pitiful he was. He had crossed a line, surely, and there was no hope for things to ever go back to the way they were, not even if he pretended, not even if she-  
  
“Wybie Lovat,” Coraline’s voice cut through the endless cacophony in his head, bringing with it a sense of serene peace.  
  
“Coraline Jones.” He breathed out her name like a whisper, like a promise. She had moved closer to him, her hand came up to grasp his arm. She held onto him firmly but gently like she did when she hugged him, and Wybie could’ve sworn he melted a little in her touch.  
  
Slowly, delicately, Wybie brought his own hand to rest on her cheek, his thumb moving in small circles. He made a mental note of thanks to his past self for forgetting to bring his skeleton gloves. He continued to simply stare at Coraline and thumb-over her cheek, not completely sure if this all was real or not. It wasn’t until Coraline moved ever-closer to his face, until she stood on the tips of her toes, until her mouth was up against his, that he really registered that yes, this was real. Their kiss was short and close-mouthed, and it was everything-and-more than anything Wybie could have hoped for. When they finally put space between themselves and Wybie moved to direct them back to The Shack, he made sure to hold Coraline’s cold hand in his own, and together, they began to make their way through the forest.

  
  
\---

  
  
“Here’s your diary back, by the way.” Coraline flung Wybie’s book towards him, but her force and direction were way off and Wybie only narrowly missed colliding face-first with it.  
  
“Hey! And, just so you know, it’s a logbook.” He crouched down to retrieve the book from its position on the carpet floor of The Shack’s living room.  
  
“Diary’s a diary,” Coraline retorted, moving closer towards Wybie and ruffling his hair. Wybie was about to retort, but Mabel sped into the room before he got the chance to.  
  
“Hey lovebirds, whatcha-” Mabel barely got half of her sentence out before Wybie, in a panic, clamped his hands over her mouth in an attempt to keep her quiet. Unfortunately, Mabel would not so easily be quieted, as she proceeded to lick his hands to free herself from vocal imprisonment.  
  
“Ewww,” Wybie groaned, but Mabel just laughed and gave a small smirk.  
  
“Hey, you’ve held super slimy slugs before,” Coraline added, attempting to stifle a giggle. “I’m sure Mabel’s spit can’t be that bad in comparison.” Wybie just groaned again, wiping his hands on his trenchcoat.  
  
Wybie and Coraline had gotten back to The Shack very late at night, so there was nobody around to inquire about how things went. Nobody seemed to comment the next morning either, except for Mabel. She promised to keep it hush-hush, but Wybie could tell that if he and Coraline didn’t spill the beans soon, Mabel most definitely would. The other kids were currently outside. Raz had promised Dipper that he’d show him the specifics of levitation, and Norman and Lili were talking about… something.  
  
“You guys better announce it soon, Dipper has to pay up!” Mabel said offhand to the both of them as she looked out the front door’s window, watching Dipper poke and prod at the levitation ball Raz had summoned.  
  
“You what?” Coraline’s head jerked violently towards Mabel, but she didn’t seem to notice.  
  
“I’ll give you a quarter of the profits?” Mabel turned to face Coraline, her eyes betraying the information that Mabel had definitely said too much.  
  
“Half.”  
  
“Half? C’mon…” Mabel pleaded, putting her puppy-dog-eyes on full display. Coraline could withstand them for only a minute before she eventually relented.  
  
“Okay, fine, a quarter. But you have to promise not to tell. Pinky promise!” Coraline added, knowing that Mabel wouldn't dare break a pinky promise.  
  
“Pinky promise,” Mabel replied, and the two shook pinkies, confirming the deal. Well, at least things hadn’t seemed to change too much, Wybie thought. Only in the ways that mattered.


End file.
